


First Pilot

by Edonohana



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Decompression Sickness, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Space opera AU, hyperspace exhaustion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-10 09:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20525999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: The Liebermans rescue a mysterious pilot, and he just might rescue them, too.





	First Pilot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).

Gamma Corps caught up with the Liebermans as they were orbiting an uninhabited and unimportant dwarf planet, which they’d reached via the auxiliary sublight system of a hyperspace ship they’d stolen so recently that all they’d seen of it was the cockpit. 

David and Sarah had hoped that their documented inability to pilot in hyperspace would throw off their track. Why would they go to the trouble of stealing a ship whose main capability was unusable for them when they could have just snatched another sublight ship? 

_Gamma Corp must have figured that was our idea,_ David thought. _Or else we just got unlucky. That is, even unluckier._

He swore at the totally unfamiliar weapons system he was using to fire at the sleek ships approaching them with what he couldn’t help thinking was sadistic slowness. He was utterly unsurprised to see them dodge his blasts with contemptuous ease. That was, when they even needed to dodge, which they mostly didn’t. 

Sarah swung their ship around an asteroid, shielding them for a few precious seconds. The screaming proximity alerts shut off for a blessed moment of silence. 

The whole family was crammed into the cockpit, so close that he could smell the fragrance of Sarah’s favorite shampoo, feel Leo’s trembling shoulder, hear Zach’s shaky breathing from his seat at communications. David sat at weapons, with astrogation within easy reach, but it didn’t matter what course he plotted. Fleeing a hyperspace ship at sublight was like a chicken fleeing a hawk. A hawk that could teleport.

“We could _try_ the hyperspace drive…?” Leo suggested. 

“Absolutely not.” David and Sarah spoke as one. Even with two Gamma Corps ships trying to kill them all, warmth flickered in his heart at that moment of parental unity. There were few things worse than death, but getting lost in hyperspace might well be exactly that, given that even physicists and pilots weren’t sure if the people aboard those vanished ships actually died. Ever. 

“But—”

“No.” Sarah’s word rang out with quiet finality. 

More doubtfully, Zach said, “We could talk to them?”

“Worth a try,” Sarah said. “It might stall them, if nothing else. Hail them, Zach.”

Zach, looking relieved to finally have something to do, sent a standard hail. To David’s complete lack of surprise, it was answered only by the shriek of the proximity alert as both Gamma Corps ships appeared over the asteroid like rising silver moons.

David fired and missed. Sarah evaded the returning fire by a hair’s breadth. 

“Yeah, mom!” Zach yelled. 

Neither David nor Sarah had the focus to spare to answer, or even look at each other. She was piloting like she never had before, darting and dipping and spinning in a frantic effort to evade the Gamma Corps ships’ fire. David, who had never been a gunner to begin with, fired more-or-less randomly, figuring he’d have as good a chance at hitting them that way as if he’d aimed. 

_Just one hit,_ David begged some cosmic force he didn’t believe in. _Just one bit of luck, for fucking once. Come on—_

The ship jolted violently, throwing them against their harnesses. Leo and Zach screamed. The ship tumbled for an instant, then recovered. 

“Just caught the edge of it,” Sarah said. 

“No shit,” David muttered. A direct hit would have blown them to pieces. But when he dared a glance over, he saw her biting her lip till a bead of blood appeared. 

With a dull, numbing certainty, he knew that it was over. Those ships really had just been toying with them. They’d probably have some fun knocking them around like a cat batting a mouse, but they’d get bored soon enough, and then they’d take the kill.

Like Sarah, David had both hands occupied in his attempt to delay the inevitable; neither could bring themselves to just give up, not even to hug their children one last time. But Leo and Zach leaned forward and laid one hand on each of their parents’ shoulders. It brought him a bitter comfort to know that at least they were all together at the end. 

The proximity alarm went off again. All four of them jumped. 

“_Another_ one?” David said incredulously. “Isn’t two enough?”

But the ship that had blinked out of hyperspace didn’t have the sleek lines or distinctive colors of the Gamma Corps ships. It was a battered vessel like none David had ever seen before, black with a ghostly white image that he couldn’t quite make out.

“That looks like Stratosphere,” Leo said. She was right: except for the colors, the ship did resemble those historic vessels of the first days of hyperspace. 

An innocent bystander? David wondered. _Here?_

The Gamma Corps ships broke off their attacks and changed position, orienting themselves toward the black ship. Sarah, taking advantage of their distraction or whatever was going on, veered away from all three of them.

Streaks of light erupted from the black ship’s guns. David instinctively ducked, but it wasn’t firing at them, but at the Gamma Corps vessels. An instant later, all three ships were blinking in and out of hyperspace, dancing around each other in a battle too fast to follow with the naked eye.

Leo leaned over, eyes wide and fixed to the screen. “The black ship’s drawing their fire away from us! See…”

She released the bruising grip she had on David’s shoulder to trace her fingers in the air. He couldn’t see the pattern she was making, and from the puzzlement on Zach’s face, he couldn’t either. Sarah, sweat running down her face, was too busy trying to escape the battle to respond.

“No!” Leo shouted at the screen. “Don’t—”

And then there were no longer three ships appearing and vanishing in a web of deadly light. The black-and-white ship floated placidly in space, and all that was left of the Gamma Corps ships were a pair of expanding clouds of debris. 

David stared at the screen, unable to believe his eyes. Somehow, against all odds, they’d been saved. The cockpit, which a moment earlier had been suffocatingly tense, erupted into cheers. Zach was yelling wordlessly, pumping his fists. David and Sarah hugged each other, kissing anywhere they could reach, tasting the salt of sweat and tears. 

David heard a sob. He and Sarah broke off at once. Leo was curled up in a ball in her chair, crying. He put an arm around her, tears of relief welling up in his own eyes, and another around Zach. “It’s okay. We’re safe now. It’s all right to cry—”

“It’s not all right!” Leo said, her words half-choked with tears. “They died—look—they died!”

He followed her pointing finger. The black ship, which he had thought unharmed, was slowly tumbling. As it rotated, he saw the great rent in its side that had torn it nearly in two. 

“It came out of hyperspace to just to shield us,” Leo said. “It blinked out, and they fired at us, and it came back and got in the way! It got them _after_ it was hit, just to make sure we’d be safe!”

David, who hadn’t been able to follow the battle at all, had no idea if Leo was right, either about the sequence of events or the black ship’s intent. But however and whyever it had happened, that ship _had_ saved them. He loved his Leo for having grief to spare for that unknown crew, and felt a pang of it himself as he looked at that broken ship. His arm tightened around her shoulders. 

“David!” Sarah grabbed his forearm. 

She’d enlarged the view. Near the black ship, amidst a trail of tools and water vapor and bits of metal, was a man, helmetless and clad only a black jumpsuit, limp and tumbling through space. His body seemed intact, or at any rate wasn’t visibly missing pieces, and he was the only human in sight. He must have been the pilot.

On the wildly unlikely chance that the man was alive, David reached for the tractor beam. But Leo was faster. Working with a delicate touch that impressed him, she caught hold of the man and pulled him toward the airlock. 

As she rapidly worked to get him inside and repressurize the lock, Zach started to bolt out. David barely managed to catch him by the arm. 

Zach twisted around, scowling. There were tear-tracks down his face. It broke David’s heart how young he looked. “I want to help!”

Sarah looked up from the screen. “Great! Go find the medical bay. See what the medical computer says about vacuum exposure—”

“I _know_ vacuum first aid,” Zach protested.

“—and get it all ready for him. If he’s alive, he’ll need more than just first aid.” Sarah gave him a gentle push. “Go!” 

Zach took off, shouting, “Computer! Directions to med bay!”

“He’s alive. I felt it when I caught him.” With that, a much cheerier-looking Leo ran after her brother.

Sarah requested directions to the airlock. As they ran along then the lighted path, David asked, “You _can’t_ feel anything like that through a tractor beam, can you? I mean, _I_ couldn’t, but…”

“No, of course not. Leo just wants it to be true.” 

“It’s possible,” David said, realizing that he too wanted it to be possible. Their entire lives had turned into one giant run of unfairness—couldn’t they get this one win? “People have survived exposures of up to ninety seconds.”

Sarah just looked at him. David was about to quiz the computer on the length of time the man had been exposed to vacuum, then realized it couldn’t tell him the exact instant someone else’s ship had depressurized, then decided not to ask. Plenty of people had died after exposures much briefer than the statistical maximum. 

The glowing floor lights led them to the airlock. David took a quick glance inside, then opened it. The pilot lay face-down in the inelegant sprawl of death, arms and legs twisted into what would have been painful positions had he been able to feel anything. David crouched down and turned him over.

The pilot’s face was gray-white where it wasn’t purple with bruises or red with broken capillaries, and his lips were gray-blue. Blood had run from his nose and ears, but was no longer flowing. When David put his hand on the man’s chest, he felt no movement, nothing but the icy slickness of his jumpsuit. Without any hope at all, David pressed two fingers under his jaw. 

A faint pulse flickered against his fingers. It was weak and irregular, as if it was uncertain if it wanted to keep going, but it was there and it didn’t stop. 

As if their hearts were linked, David felt his own leap. “He’s alive!”

He’d been through the vacuum first aid classes, of course, but being present for an explosive decompression was the one piece of bad luck the family had missed until now. David had always felt mildly nauseated just watching the vids, let alone practicing on unpleasantly realistic mannequins. But now that he was the closest person to the pilot, he didn’t hesitate. He just bent over, tipped the pilot’s head back, made a seal over his mouth, and blew air into his lungs. Once, twice, three times. No response. His skin was freezing cold. 

“Am I doing it right?” David asked Sarah, then bent again to breathe into the pilot’s mouth. 

“I think so?” Sarah said. “Want me to—”

As David lifted his head to take a breath for himself, the pilot gave a weak cough. David froze, staring down at the man he’d already given up for dead. The pilot coughed again, a little louder this time, gasped, then took a deeper breath. His hands, covered in black gloves, clenched into fists. And there he was, still unconscious but breathing raggedly, unexpectedly alive.

“You did it!” Sarah exclaimed. 

“I guess I did.” David could hardly believe it himself. 

Sarah hugged him. “Leo will be so glad.” 

“Not only are we all alive, but now she’s got an actual hyperspace pilot to hero-worship and interrogate!” 

Sarah laughed. “It’s her best day ever!”

An instant later, they were both whooping and howling with laughter, tears running down their faces as they clung to each other. His Sarah was alive. Leo and Zach were alive. And he was alive. His family was together and safe, at least for now. 

They wiped their eyes and bent over the pilot again. Sarah unsealed his jumpsuit, baring him to the waist. The exposed skin of his chest was as bruised and reddened as that of his face, but he had no visible wounds beyond a handful of minor scrapes. He did, however, have a _lot_ of scars. David stared with horrified, nauseated fascination at the shiny discolored burns, the indents of puncture wounds, and the white lines of cuts, some jagged and messy, some so neat they had to be surgical. A few of them looked very recently healed.

“There’s a guy who’s had a rougher time than us,” David muttered. “Didn’t think that was possible.”

“Help me roll him over,” Sarah said. “I want to check his back.”

She held his head while David rolled him on to his side. Something jingled and clinked. While Sarah made sure he had no wounds and exclaimed over the equally appalling set of scars on his back, David took a closer look at the metal chain around his neck. A pair of inscribed rectangular tags and a stylized skull dangled from it.

David read the inscriptions aloud, “It says Frank Castle—I guess that’s his name—and a serial number… or maybe not. There’s not enough digits.”

Sarah rubbed the scar on her wrist where David had cut out her ID/tracker chip. “There used to be fewer, I think.”

David knew the sting that instantly ran along his own scar was purely imaginary, but it hurt nonetheless. He unsealed the pilot—Frank’s—gloves and checked his wrists, but could feel no tell-tale chip outline, and the only scars were the dimpled punctures of the hyperspace connections. Odd. 

A rattle of wheels made them both look up. Leo was running up with a gurney. “Zach’s got everything ready in the med bay!”

She looked down at the pilot, and her face lit up with the biggest smile David had seen since he’d made the disastrous decision to follow up on a certain file rather than delete it and pretend he’d never seen it. “He made it!”

Frank’s eyes opened. They were brown, the whites dotted with scarlet burst vessels. Dazed and uncomprehending, he stared up at David and Sarah. 

“It’s all right,” David said, keeping his voice soothing and his words simple, so even a man in shock could understand. “Lie still. We—”

Something slammed into David’s chest like a meteorite impacting a planet. It took him a second to realize what had happened, which was that Frank had somehow knocked him all the way out of the airlock, and knocked the wind out of him as a kind of bonus. He could do nothing but struggle to inhale as he watched Sarah leap up and slam the airlock shut on Frank, then lock him inside. 

“Dad?” Leo said nervously.

Sarah dropped down beside him. “David! Are you all right?”

He held up a hand, mentally crossing his fingers that he’d be all right in a second. Air rushed into his lungs, and he managed an articulate, “Uh-huh.” 

He felt his chest, which was tender enough that he was guaranteed one hell of a bruise, then gingerly stood up. Leo and Sarah joined him at the airlock window. Frank was again sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath. He tried to sit up, making them all nervously jerk backward, then sank back down to the floor. 

“Well, this is a complication,” David said. “I _think_ that was just a sort of really aggressive startle reflex, but…”

“Oxygen deprivation can make you delirious,” Leo piped up. “He was exposed to vacuum—he needs help. He might have decompression sickness.”

“I know,” said Sarah. “But he’s not coming anywhere near you any of us until we’re sure he’s safe.” She flipped the switch on the airlock intercom. “Frank Castle?”

He started at the name, then seemed to settle into himself with the instinctive wariness of the animals David had seen in zoos. 

Sarah waited, but he didn’t reply. In a much gentler voice, she went on, “Your ship was destroyed. We caught you with a tractor beam. You weren’t breathing when we got you onboard. My husband—the man you just hit—gave you mouth-to-mouth. We’re trying to help you, not hurt you.”

“We’re not with Gamma Corps,” David said. “We’re the ship they were trying to destroy.” 

“The one flying at sublight,” Leo put in. “The one you saved.”

Frank turned his head, wincing. His ears were bloody, and David wasn’t sure how much he could hear. 

“The Gamma Corps ships.” Frank’s voice was very hoarse, and he had to stop to take a breath. “I got them, right?”

“Yeah, you did,” David said. “You blew them up.”

“And you rescued me?” He sounded more dismayed than relieved, though maybe that was just an artifact of his difficulty speaking. It sounded like it hurt.

“We did. And then you knocked my husband clear out of the airlock,” said Sarah. “Why?”

“Sorry. Thought I’d been captured by the enemy.” Frank frowned, and David guessed he was wondering if he _had_ been and this was all some kind of trick. 

The sound of running feet was clear in the silence as Zach came panting up to the airlock. “The pilot’s alive? He knocked Dad out the airlock?!” 

Frank looked from Zach to Leo, then back to Zach. “Sorry, kid. Didn’t know he was your dad.” 

“Are you feeling any pain in your joints?” Zach asked, having obviously refreshed his memory of vacuum first aid via the medical computer. “Itchiness? Cough? Inability to urinate?”

David smothered a chuckle. Frank didn’t smile, but his amusement was clear in his voice when he said, “Well, I’m not going to test that one in here.” Zach looked hurt, clearly wondering if Frank was making fun of him. When Frank spoke again, he addressed Zach as seriously as if he was a doctor, “I’ve got pain in my elbows and shoulders. Chest, too.”

“On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt, how bad is it?” Zach asked.

Behind Zach’s back, David and Sarah exchanged glances. He’d been a handful even before everthing had gone to hell, and that sure hadn’t helped. But here he was, stepping up to the plate with a maturity David had rarely seen before. 

Frank started to shrug, then stopped with a wince. “Wouldn’t mean anything. I have a high tolerance.”

He began to cough, sucking air back in each time with a painful-sounding wheeze. 

“Sarah…” David said quietly, while Leo and Zach said impatiently, “Mom! Dad!”

Sarah gave a decisive nod. “Fine. But don’t get too close.”

Reluctantly, the kids backed away. David opened the airlock, waving Sarah back. He didn’t think Frank would try to attack again, but his chest still ached from the blow and the thought of that fist striking Sarah made him feel sick. But it wasn’t only the proof of how hard Frank could hit that kept him wary of the man with the vacuum trauma who couldn’t even sit up. It was something in his eyes, ever since he’d opened them. Not malicious, David thought. Just… dangerous.

Frank looked up at him. “I won’t hurt you.”

Mentally crossing his fingers, David put his arms around Frank and helped him on to the gurney. He was heavy, his skin cold, and the effort of trying to bear some of his weight set him gasping.

Zach led the way to the medical bay, which looked thankfully well-equipped. The computer and Zach informed them what David had already figured out, which was that Frank had decompression sickness and needed a stay in the chamber. It also told him something he didn’t already know, which was how to operate this ship’s model, then asked, “Is the patient a hyperspace pilot?’” 

“Yes,” Frank said hoarsely, then began to cough again. 

They set the chamber controls and helped him into it. David wondered how a pilot’s treatment differed from that of ordinary mortals. More oxygen to support their super-special brains? 

Leo, who had been staring at Frank the entire time with a distinctly hero-worshipping look, said, “Will you be all right in there?”

He nodded. 

“I mean… you won’t be bored?”

“Nah. I’ll be asleep.” He coughed. 

“Don’t make him talk,” David said. With a wink, he added, “Wait till he’s recovered. Then you can quiz him day and night.”

“Sorry,” Leo said to Frank. “I’m just, um, I’m really interested in hyperspace.”

“Me too, kid.” His words were slurred, and his eyelids fluttered. 

David draped a blanket over him. “Ready for the works? Or shall I wait till you’re out?”

Frank shrugged. And then his eyes closed and he went limp as his body made the decision for him. 

David hit the switch to seal the chamber, and watched the tubes and wires extrude from the walls and slither under the blanket and over Frank’s face to do their unpleasant thing. Frank didn’t stir, making David’s heart give a little anxious lurch. But the monitor showed that his vital signs were stable. If the vacuum trauma classes were right, and they sure had been so far, Frank would sleep for another twenty-four hours and then be ready to come out.

“Dad!” Leo was so excited, she was almost jumping up and down. “Did you see what he was wearing around his neck?!” 

“His ID.”

“No, the skull.” With awe, she said, “He’s a First Pilot!” 

Zach blew out a scornful breath. “That was hundreds of years ago. They’re all dead.”

“It was barely _one_ hundred, Zach!” She took out her personal system and showed them an old 2D image of men and women posing in Frank-like jumpsuits, with chains around their necks. When she enlarged the image, the two tags and the skull jumped into view.

“Anyone could make that necklace,” Zach said. “All you need’s a printer!”

Leo rolled her eyes. “It’s metal, Zach. Computer, read skull material.”

“The early hyperspace pilots now known as the First Pilots adopted a stylized skull as their informal symbol,” said the system in its clear, colorless voice. “While its use was discouraged by the government, who believed it had a negative effect on morale, the First Pilots claimed it with pride as a symbol of the immense risks they took and their high death rate. Elaborate on the controversy regarding the use of the word ‘death’ in regard to living beings lost in hyperspace?”

“End,” said Leo, and pocked the system. “See?”

David had the same unsettled feeling he’d gotten when he’d first seen the file that had started this entire mess, as if he teetered at the edge of a precipice. As if he believed that he could choose to step back, but in fact he was already so unbalanced that his fall was inevitable.

Sarah broke the silence. “It’s just not possible, honey. He probably wears their symbol in their memory, to honor them.”

“Or maybe…” Leo trailed off, then went on in a firmer voice. “Maybe ships that vanish in hyperspace aren’t dispersed all over the galaxy or trapped there forever. Maybe they’re just… somewhere else. And maybe sometimes they come back.”

“Oh, no WAY!” Zach exclaimed. “They’re DEAD, Leo! Dead as those all those Gamma Corps guys Frank blew up!”

“Shh,” David said. “You’ll wake him up. Why don’t you go explore the ship? Find out what’s in it. See if there’s better food than space rations.”

Usually that suggestion would have sent the kids rushing out. This time, they went reluctantly and with several backward glances. 

Once they were gone, Sarah kissed David. For a few minutes, they clung to each other, reliving the wild joy at their impossible escape.

David could have stayed in her arms forever, but she reluctantly broke it off. “I have to take us out of here. We’ve hung around this system too long already.”

She went out, leaving David alone with their mystery man. A First Pilot?

“No way,” David muttered, then laughed ruefully as he realized that he was echoing his son. 

He peered into the chamber. Frank lay absolutely still, but the deathlike blue-gray shade had gone from his battered face. There was no need for David or anyone to sit with him—the chamber was doing the work, not them, and it wasn’t as if he’d wake up and want company. At least one of those tubes was pumping him with sedatives. 

Still. Whether he’d known it or not, he’d saved them all. David wasn’t about to leave him alone.

In what was becoming an extremely familiar moment, Frank awoke with a jolt and no idea where he was. One instant he was unconscious, the next he was struggling inside some kind of cage. He struck out with hands and feet, and hit strong walls. Frank forced his eyes to focus, to seek out its weak points…

“Hey! Frank!”

It was a girl’s voice. She was standing over his prison, a transparent tube—no, it was a hyperbaric chamber…

His memory returned, as it always did, as a blow. Maria and the kids were dead. And he wasn’t.

He pushed all that away. The girl looked scared, shifting from foot to foot, ready to leap backward. Away from him.

“Hey.” His voice came out hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “It’s all right. It’s sealed. I can’t get out.”

He’d meant it as a reassurance, not as a complaint. But she stepped forward, not back, the fear vanishing from her face. “Oh, I can open it. The monitor says it’s safe now.”

“Better call—” Frank began, but before he could finish speaking she hit the switch, and the chamber opened like a clam. 

He shook his head. Unbelievable. Who’d leave their young daughter alone to watch the completely unknown stranger they’d pulled from vacuum? 

Well, done was done. Frank sat up, testing his body. It hurt, of course, but he could move. He could fight. 

“I’m Leo,” she said. “Leo Lieberman.”

“Frank Castle,” he said automatically, before remembering that she already knew his name. His dog tags, of course.

“Soooo,” she said. “You’re a pilot. What’s hyperspace like?” 

“It’s hard to describe.”

Cunningly, she tried another approach. “But if you _had_ to describe it, what’s it _most_ like?”

“Well…”

“Hey! Leo!”

Her father rushed in, his hair and beard standing on end. He came to an awkward stop when he saw that she and Frank were doing nothing but talking. “Leo! You opened the chamber?”

“It said it was time,” she protested. 

Her father glanced at the monitor. “It can’t be. It’s barely been eight hours.”

Frank, realizing what must have happened, revised his estimation of the man a notch upward, or at least one less far down. He’d obviously had no idea he was letting his daughter do anything but cool her heels and dream of hyperspace for an hour or two. It had been a dangerous mistake, the sort that only a person ignorant of hyperspace and naïve to evil could make, but at least he hadn’t known he was being careless with his daughter’s safety.

“We recover faster from vacuum exposure,” Frank said. “Pilots, I mean.”

“Do you know why?” Leo asked.

Her father gave her a nudge. “Leo. Take off. I need to help Frank do some stuff.”

“I could help.”

“Some stuff that involves taking his clothes off.”

“Oh!” Leo fled in horror.

Frank found his eyes meeting her father’s in mutual amusement. 

“Do you have kids?” her father asked.

There it was again, that hollow-point bullet to the heart. Tearing pain, then numb emptiness. “I had two. They died.”

“Oh. Oh, man.” Leo’s dad tugged at his unruly hair. “I’m so sorry.”

He seemed to mean it, too. Frank looked away. Finally, her dad said, “My name’s David. My wife’s Sarah and my, uh, my son’s Zach. My daughter’s Leo.”

“I know. She told me.”

“Just FYI, she was _not_ supposed to be here when you woke up. I only let her watch you at all because I thought you wouldn’t wake up for another sixteen hours.”

“I figured.”

“Things have been kind of… rough… lately,” David said. “Thought I’d give her a treat.”

“Watching a decompression chamber?”

“Watching a hyperspace pilot and plotting all the questions she could ask when he wakes up,” David said. “She’s a little obsessed.”

“You should teach her to pilot sublight,” Frank said. “Bet she’d get a kick out of that.”

“Her mom’s doing that. Not really my thing.”

He looked so expectant that Frank obliged him by asking “What _is_ your thing?”

“Getting into things.” David smiled briefly. “Any thing with a computer. That’s how we got this ship. It’s not our first, either. We were really hoping we’d shaken Gamma Corps off our tracks this time.”

That same hopeful, “go on and ask” expression was on his face, but Frank didn’t inquire. So Gamma Corps had it in for them. They had it in for a lot of people. He didn’t need to know the details. “Maybe now you have.”

“Hope so. And thanks. You saved our lives.”

Frank gave an uneasy shrug. It had been a decision that had made perfect sense at the time, when they’d just been abstract innocents that he was in a position to protect. He’d always known he’d sacrifice his own life eventually, and he’d felt some relief that the time had come at last. But now that he was unexpectedly still alive and stuck on their ship, meeting them as real people, he felt acutely uncomfortable. It just wasn’t how things had been supposed to go.

David cleared his throat. “You could use a shower. Let me help you.”

“I’m okay.” Frank stood up, a little shakily, but found his balance. Then he realized what David had just said. “A _shower_. You don’t mean a real one?”

“Yeah. What, was yours busted?”

Frank shook his head. “Didn’t have one. Just water packets and soap packets and sponges.”

“Whoa, old school. Well, enjoy. It recycles the water, so use as much as you like.”

He led Frank to a bathroom with an honest-to-God shower cubicle and left him there with a change of clothes. Frank tested the water. He could get it to warm. He could get it to _hot_. He’d almost forgotten what that felt like. He washed the blood and grime and sweat from his body and hair, then stood there under that luxurious spray and let it run over him.

He toweled off and dressed in the cubicle. His clean skin and poorly-fitting civilian clothes felt like a bad disguise, and his presence in this family felt like a worse joke. But they’d drop him off soon enough. He’d need another ship, since his had been destroyed, but he’d figure something out. And then this whole strange interval would become just another incident fading out of view. 

“You dressed?” David called from the med bay.

“Yeah.”

Sarah was waiting with David when he stepped out, her red-gold hair shining under the bright lights. “Hi. I’m Sarah Lieberman.”

She shook his hand. Soft hands, civilian hands. Like David’s. She wore some kind of perfume, or maybe it was just the smell of her hair. “Thank you. You saved our lives.”

“Thank you for saving mine,” he replied. “You’re the pilot, right? That was some nice flying.”

She scoffed. “Kept us from getting blown up for all of three seconds.”

“Well,” Frank said. “Those were three seconds you needed.”

Startled, she met his eyes and, for the first time, held his gaze. “I guess. Nothing like what you can do. Anyway, Frank, do you want to eat something?”

“Sure. Thanks.” 

“Come on.”

He followed her and David out of the med bay. Most of his mind was occupied by automatically observing the layout and functions of the ship, but a part of him found it mildly silly that they were taking him to supplies rather than bringing the ration packet to him. 

They arrived not at a supply room but at a galley. Leo and Zach were already sitting at the table, Zach drumming his feet impatiently and Leo clasping her hands under her chin. The next thing Frank knew, he was sitting at the table with a bowl of steaming soup in front of him. The kids started firing questions at him, but Sarah hushed them. “Let him eat.”

Frank bent over the soup, as much to escape the interrogation as to eat. But once he took a spoonful, he wouldn’t have heard a hundred ships firing on him. Sweet, tangy, rich, hot, textured: _this_ was what real food was like. He’d almost forgotten. He lifted another spoonful to his mouth, trying to identify the ingredients. Real tomatoes—canned, but real. Real onions. Top of the line vat beef. 

“Who’d you steal this ship from, David?” Frank asked. “King of the world?”

“Pretty much,” David said. “It’s a hotshot CEO’s private vessel. Brand new.”

“How new?” 

“This is its maiden voyage,” David said, grinning. “It was all stocked up and ready to go when we nabbed it. We really lucked out—well, sort of.”

Urgently, Frank asked, “Has it ever had its hyperdrive tuned? I mean after it left the factory?”

David shrugged. “I could check, but I doubt it. Like I said, it’s literally brand new.”

“Oh.” Frank applied himself to his soup again, which was soon joined by a chunk of actual bread. Toasted. With butter. “You eat like this all the time?”

“Hell no,” said David. Sarah snorted, and the kids burst into giggles. 

“We’ve been stuffing ourselves non-stop since we found the galley,” Sarah admitted. 

“Until you stopped us!” Zach said. 

“It’s not going to last forever,” Sarah said. “There’s only about a month’s worth of the good stuff.”

“And a year’s worth of rat packs,” Leo said glumly. Zach made a gagging noise.

Frank took a bite of bread. He wasn’t sure which was more astonishing, the crisp crust shattering against his teeth or that he’d been sat down at the table and fed like family. The Liebermans could have just as easily kept him in the med bay and fed him the rats. Sure, he’d shot down those ships, but they’d pulled him out of vacuum. They were _even_. They didn’t need to do anything else.

“Frank,” Leo began, in a tone that suggested that she was going to ask a question she’d been sitting on for a while. “I, um, I saw—we all saw—”

The shriek of a proximity alert dumped a gallon of adrenaline into his blood. The Liebermans all flinched and froze for a second before jumping up. They were so _slow_—no—David and Zach were slow. Sarah was a little faster. And Leo, though she reacted like a civilian, moved fast enough once she’d gotten past the initial shock. Frank, impatient, was forced to follow them as they raced to the cockpit.

Another Gamma Corps hyperspace ship. Of course. Frank shouldered David aside, dropped down at the weapons station, and fired on it. The ship blinked out, but he’d fought more than any pilot alive and he _knew_ where it would reappear. More importantly, he knew when. Frank counted down, the milliseconds ticking precisely in his mind, and fired an instant before the ship reappeared. It exploded into a cloud of sparks and dust. 

“Not much of a fight,” Frank remarked. “I think the first two ships were actual fighters, and this one was just exploratory. They don’t know for sure where you are or what happened to the others, or you’d have gotten more ships with better pilots.”

They were all staring at him, jaws open, eyes huge. 

“What?” Frank asked.

“That…” David began, then wiped his hand over his face. “How the hell did you do that?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Frank said.

“You blew up that ship before any of us could even _sit down!_” Zach burst out.

“How did you know where it would be?” Leo asked. 

“Practice,” he repeated. “Good eye, kid.”

His gaze stole to the chair Sarah was standing over. She’d been using it for sublight piloting, but that wasn’t really what it was _for_. 

“Can you check the maintenance records now?” Frank asked David. “For what I said before, if the hyperdrive has ever been tuned.”

David went to check, but he wasn’t looking at the records that scrolled across the screen. He was looking at Frank. All of them were. Frank waited for them to ask what was important about the tuning, but instead David said, almost casually, “So that’s what you have against Gamma Corps, huh? They sabotaged someone’s drive… A friend’s?”

“You know about that already?” Frank asked, startled.

They all nodded. David said, “That’s why we’re on the run. Someone found out that they have a nasty habit of making sure their enemies get lost in hyperspace. The drives need so much tuning and hyperspace is so dangerous anyway, God knows how many people they’ve done it to without anyone ever suspecting.”

Frank’s belly felt like he’d swallowed a rock. They knew so much, and yet so little. They thought they were cynical and disillusioned, and they were such innocents. 

“Hyperspace isn’t dangerous,” he said. “At least, it’s not _that_ dangerous. Oh, it was at first, before they figured out how to tune the drives just right, and how often you have to do it. That why so many of—of the First Pilots died. But now?” He shook his head. “The _only_ reason ships are lost in hyperspace as often as they are is because sometimes Gamma Corps sabotages their drives when they bring them in for tuning. They keep their monopoly on the drives and their upkeep, anyone who crosses them vanishes, and anyone who doesn’t use hyperspace is too poor or too provincial to threaten them anyway.”

David snorted. “It’s so ironic. They’re trying so hard to kill me to stop me from telling on them, but they probably don’t need to. I tried, and nobody believed me. I’m just some nobody shouting into the wind. And I can’t try convincing any heads of planets in person because without hyperspace, I can’t get there.”

Frank cleared his throat. Despite the hyperbaric chamber treatment, it still felt sore and swollen. “You can get there.” 

“You’d take us?” Leo said. Her eyes were shining like stars. Like Lisa’s eyes had, once. He had to look away.

“Yeah.” Then, seeing a different kind of mad gleam in David’s eyes, he said roughly, “Once. I’ll take you to _one_ planet of your choice. You can drop me off there. I’ll find another ship.”

“But the drives have to be tuned every few jumps,” Leo pointed out. “You can’t just keep getting new ships… can you?”

In fact, he was pretty sure he could. But how he’d do that, he didn’t want to say in front of the kids. Instead, he told a different truth. “I can tune them myself. Not as well as a Gamma Corps tuning station, but I can.”

“Not as well…” Sarah was frowning. “You said if they’re not tuned perfectly, the ship can be lost in hyperspace.”

“Yeah, but that’s when pilot skill comes into play. I’ll be fine.” Before any of them could follow up, he said, “You got any idea of where you’d want to go? We should jump soon, before Gamma Corps sends any more ships.”

David shot Frank a look like he wanted to keep arguing, but keeping your family as safe as possible wasn’t really something you could argue with. “Right. Quick family meeting in the galley!”

The Liebermans filed out, leaving the cockpit to Frank. If he wanted, he could lock them out and take the ship wherever he liked. He wouldn’t. But he _could_. They really needed someone to look out for them. Tell them they were being way too trusting. Though of course they’d have to leave him alone in the cockpit eventually, if they took his offer. It wasn’t like they could keep watch over him in hyperspace.

He sat in the comfortable chair, with his new clothes and clean skin and full stomach, turning over the question of naivete. Sure, they shouldn’t trust him. But he wasn’t going to harm them. Unless his presence brought violence to their door… but violence was already at their door. For at least one moment, they’d been safer with him than without him. 

He hadn’t reached any conclusions by the time David returned. “We’ve picked a place. Aldebaran 5. You can drop us at the moon and we’ll take a shuttle down.”

“Okay. You know how to do hyperspace sedation?”

David smiled. “No, but the med computer and the chambers do. We’re good.”

“Okay. I’ll just go down to make sure it takes effect.” 

Frank and David found Sarah and the kids already waiting in their hyperspace chambers. As David got into his chamber, Frank double-checked the med computer and chambers; it all seemed fine. 

“Good night,” David called cheerfully. “See you in the morning!”

“Dad,” Zach protested, rolling his eyes. Frank suppressed a smile. Dad jokes never changed. 

“Hey, Frank?” Leo asked. “You’ll tell me what it’s like after we arrive, right?” 

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I’ll try, anyway.”

“Just a blink of an eye,” Sarah said. “Computer, begin hyperspace sedation.”

The chambers closed, and the tubes and needles slithered out. It had always unsettled Frank a bit to watch that, but he did, as much as he could given that he was trying to keep an eye on four people. The read-outs said they were safely under, but the consequences of a normal person being conscious in hyperspace didn’t bear thinking of.

“David?” Frank called, and rapped sharply on his chamber. David didn’t move. Frank did the same to all of them before he left the med bay. 

The ship seemed very silent and empty. No more than his own ship had, of course. But he’d noticed it less there. 

Frank sat down in the pilot’s seat. His heart began to pound with anticipation as he entered the coordinates. No matter how many times he’d done this, he never got used to it. No pilot ever did. 

“Computer,” he said. “Prepare for hyperspace.”

Needles pricked his wrists, providing the link to the ship that he needed to navigate. Reality tilted, then began to blur. Frank could no longer feel the chair beneath him, or see the cockpit or the stars. There was a tremendous wrench, as if he’d been forcibly yanked through some great barrier—that part was always more unpleasant and jolting than he expected, even when he reminded himself of that beforehand—and then he was _in._

He’d promised to try to describe it to Leo, so he tried to analyze the experience to put it into words. 

_I am the stars_, he thought, then, _The stars are me._

His senses spread out to encompass the galaxy, and beyond. But they weren’t human senses. He didn’t see or hear or feel, didn’t smell or taste or know. He perceived, and he didn’t know how he perceived, only that it was as vivid and shocking and joyous as Maria’s kiss, as Frank Junior’s hand in his, as the taste of the tomato soup. He just _knew_.

He knew the moon of Aldebaran 5, and knew the way to get there. It would be as easy and sensual as taking a stroll along a beautiful beach at sunset, with gulls calling and the scent of the sea all around. It would be as difficult and terrifying as flying a mission in an ancient plane with wooden wings while modern airplanes tried to shoot you down in flames. Frank prepared to begin…

Someone was calling for him. Not in sound, but in something else. Someone was lost and scared and thrilled and overwhelmed and—

Frank didn’t speak in words—he couldn’t even think in words—but he knew it was Leo. There was an instant of terror as he thought the sedative had failed and her mind had been destroyed. Then he knew that was impossible. He perceived her mind, bright and quick and very much aware. A pilot’s mind. 

They had accidentally tested her as a pilot by sedating her and taking her into hyperspace. A pilot would wake up, and be unharmed.

He called out to her, reached out to her. He showed her what she was and that it was all right, that she was safe, that he would protect her. 

Her delight filled his senses. She gloried in hyperspace and the idea of being a pilot, and demanded that he teach her. A questing hope reached out that he might let her take the controls.

He reminded her that there was only one pilot’s chair. She couldn’t control the ship herself. But she could learn by experiencing what he did and why. 

He linked his mind with hers. She would learn some things he hadn’t intended to reveal, but she was a pilot now even if she never flew a ship, and she had the right to know. 

Frank reached out, his perceptions leading Leo’s as if he’d placed his hand over hers. Together, they took the first step of their infinite, endless journey that, in real time, would last less than a second.

Coming out of hyperspace was as rough as going in. Frank had always struggled for metaphors to explain it. Like getting a spaceship dropped on your head, he’d thought sometimes. Like your skeleton extracting itself from your body. Like being turned inside out.

And then he was back in time and space. The viewscreen showed the moon of Aldebaran 5, and the computer informed him that they were in a safe orbit. The voice was shrill, piercing; trying to follow the words hurt his head. He felt both chilled and feverish, and was trembling with exhaustion. Aldebaran 5 had been a long, long way away in hyperspace, in which space (if there was such a thing) was measured differently. Between that and guiding Leo and jumping injured, the aftereffects were hitting Frank a lot harder than usual.

A section of the chair arm slid aside with a grating sound that felt like nails scraping along his bones. But when it stopped, a glass of restorative was at his hand, sealed over and with a straw poking out. Frank took a deep breath, ordered his hands to stop shaking and his legs to hold him up, and picked it up to take to Leo.

He had to lean against the wall to make it to the med bay, but he managed to stagger across the floor to her chamber. Frank unsealed it and looked into Leo’s pale, wide-eyed face. She too was trembling. He couldn’t believe it had only been a few minutes since he’d left her there. 

“Here.” Bracing himself against the side of her chamber, he lifted her head and held the straw to her lips. “Drink this, sweetheart, you’ll feel better.”

The color returned to her cheeks once she’d finished, and she sat up on her own. “I’m a pilot!”

“Yeah. You are.” 

She frowned at him. “You’re shaking. Didn’t you take a restorative yourself?” 

“Guess I forgot. Why don’t you get me one?”

She hopped out of the chamber and scampered out. Frank had intended to wake up the rest of the family while she was gone, but there was no way he could pry himself off her chamber; it was the only thing keeping him upright. He thought of lying down in it, but the idea of having to turn around and lever himself up seemed impossible. And then he was sliding down in slow motion until he landed on the floor in a crumpled sitting position. His head hurt so badly, he couldn’t think or see, and it was too heavy to hold up. He rested it on his knees. 

The next thing he knew, someone was guiding a straw into his mouth and coaxing him to drink. The sickly sweetness of the restorative spread a welcome cool over his body, easing his pain and clearing his senses. Frank straightened up and found all the Liebermans clustered around him. Sarah was holding the glass, and David had his arm around Frank’s back.

“You want to lie down?” David asked. 

“I’m fine,” Frank said. 

“I mean in one of the chambers, not on the floor. I could help you up.”

“I’m _fine_.” Gritting his teeth, he stood up to prove it, then sat down heavily on Leo’s vacated chamber. He glanced at Leo, who was beaming fit to crack her cheeks. “You tell them?”

She nodded, grinning even more hugely. Leo was the only one who seemed pleased, though. Zach looked jealous, and both David and Sarah looked upset. 

“So what’s hyperspace really like, Leo?” Zach asked Leo.

“It’s hard to describe,” she said. 

“Oh, come on!” Zach protested. “You always promised you’d tell me when you were a pilot.”

“I meant to, but it’s not that easy!”

“Okay, Leo,” Sarah said. “So you have the potential. That doesn’t mean you _have_ to be a pilot.”

“But I do,” Leo said.

“She does,” Frank said. Sarah gave him a genuinely murderous glare, but he said, “Hyperspace isn’t something you can experience once and then give up. It’ll—” David gave him a different sort of glare, and made a “cut” gesture with his hand. Frank decided to skip the statistics on depression and drug abuse in grounded pilots. “It breaks your heart.”

“She’s too young,” Sarah said, having clearly recalled the statistics herself. “Maybe when she’s older.”

“Oh, sure,” Frank agreed. “She can’t pilot a ship yet. But she can sit in on jumps now.”

“Teach me,” Leo said eagerly. “Please, Frank! We already have the ship!”

“We have a ship that can’t be tuned safely,” David pointed out.

Leo poked Frank in the ribs. “Tell them.”

Frank sighed, resigned. If he didn’t, she would. “I’m a First Pilot—”

“I knew it!” exclaimed Zach. 

“You did not!” said Leo.

“Yes, I did!”

Frank cleared his throat, cutting them off. “I found out some things Gamma Corps didn’t want me to know. They sabotaged my drive. I was… lost.” 

“Lost in hyperspace?” Sarah asked.

Frank nodded. 

“But you came back!” Leo said. “I knew pilots could!”

He could tell from the happy excitement on her face that this was the extent of what she’d understood in hyperspace. She was a sensitive, thoughtful girl, and she wouldn’t have looked so delighted if she’d known the rest: that he’d only managed to pull himself out of that timeless, perilous, irresistible realm by his longing to rejoin with Maria and Lisa and Frank Junior. And that when he’d finally emerged, thinking maybe an hour had gone by, he’d found that a hundred years had passed and they’d long since lived their lives to their natural ends.

Sarah and David seemed to have put two and two together. Sarah laid her hand over his, and David sat down beside him, bracing Frank’s side with his back.

Leo, still bubbling over with happiness, said, “The drive tuning—you don’t really need it, right? Once you’ve been lost and then found your way out, you can do it again, right?”

“Yeah,” Frank admitted. 

“So you could find the other people who got lost?” Zach said. “If you’re alive, they must be too.”

Frank and Leo looked at each other. “Maybe…” she said, at the same time he said, “If I deliberately get lost, maybe…”

“Wait. You didn’t even try?” Zach said incredulously.

“Zach,” David said in a warning tone. 

“I haven’t been here that long,” Frank said. 

But Zach was right. Given what had happened to Frank, he hadn’t been sure anyone lost from his time would want to come back. And once he’d realized it was still happening, he’d been busy hunting down Gamma Corps ships and blowing them up to risk exploring hyperspace. He’d been afraid if he lost himself again and the only reason he had to emerge was revenge, he’d never come out again.

“I could help,” Leo volunteered. 

And that would solve _that_ problem, Frank thought. He’d never let himself stay in hyperspace if it meant trapping Leo there too. 

He tore himself away from that thought. This was all sounding like a commitment that would take him away from his real mission. “No, sweetheart. I got things to do. And so do your parents.”

“Please, Frank,” Leo begged. “I’m going to be a pilot anyway—_someone_ will teach me. I want it to be you.”

Sarah laid her hand on Frank’s arm. He started, but only a little. “She’s right. Oh, David and I could fight her as hard as we can, and to be honest, I want to. But she won’t be a little girl forever. Eventually, she’ll make her own choices. If she’s going to do this _ridiculously dangerous_ thing, I want her to learn from the best.”

Feeling cornered, Frank turned to David. “What about Aldebaran 5?”

“Oh, we should definitely make a stop there,” David said, grinning. “But you know, if we can always jump safely, you could go on ferrying me from place to place while I try to convince everyone Gamma Corps is sabotaging their ships, and you could coach Leo on the way.”

“I…” Frank fished for objections that didn’t come down to _I promised myself that I’d personally murder everyone at Gamma Corps._ For some reason, that didn’t sound as strong of an argument when he thought of saying it aloud as it did inside his head.

David nudged him in the ribs. “Think of the bread, Frank. And the soup. And the showers.”

“There’s only a month’s worth of bread.” 

“In a hyperspace ship, we could always get more,” David said blithely.

Frank hadn’t missed the one thing none of them had said, in all these arguments to get him to stay. Nobody had said, “We saved your life. We gave up our nice normal lives to try to take down the same people who ruined yours. You owe us.” Oh, sure, he’d saved them too, so an argument could be made that they were even. But they hadn’t even _tried_.

They couldn’t force him to him stay. He could leave them and go on fighting alone. 

Or he could protect them as they waged their own bloodless battles, teach Leo the skills she’d need to survive, and at least try to rescue everyone lost in hyperspace. If nothing else, the unexpected emergence of everyone Gamma Corps had tried to bury there would cause one hell of a lot of trouble for them.

He could stay with this family who’d given him life and breath, affection and trust, hope and healing and human touch. Who _were_ these people who’d let a dangerous stranger into their lives and gift him so casually with such precious things?

Frank guessed he’d have to stick around to find out.


End file.
